How to Effectively Remove Android Crapware

A step-by-step tutorial on how to keep preinstalled apps from cluttering up your Android phone's menus and using valuable system resources.

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Whether it's an unwanted NFL app preloaded on your Verizon phone or AT&T's unnecessary Navigator service, every Android phone sold by carrier comes festooned with crapware that you can't uninstall. Even worse, if you check your settings menu, you'll see that some of these apps are actively running in the background, devouring your system resources.

Unless you've rooted your phone -- a risky process that voids your warranty -- you cannot delete these apps from your storage memory. However, with a few simple steps, on any Android 4.0 or greater device, you can make them disappear from the apps menu and prevent them from loading in the background.

Navigate to Settings. You can get to the settings menu either in your apps menu or, on most phones, by pulling down the notification drawer and tapping a button there.

The offending app will now disappear from the All apps menu and will no longer launch in the background. If you want to re-enable an app, simply look for it at the bottom of the list of All apps in settings, select it and tap Enable.